Human Connections Key to Informal Education

When I started at Jewish Baby Network, I wanted to help new parents make friends. I knew from experience that parents at home with newborns crave personal connections and having a chance to learn and share with others. I wanted to take that moment and connect young families, guiding their learning and helping them build community through a Jewish lens.

Fostering human connections is at the heart of informal education. Seeing Jewish Baby Network families connect with each other and make new friends at holiday events, Shabbat programs, and family playgroups is always a highlight for me. What is even more powerful is watching Jewish Baby Network families start applying the Jewish parenting, practices, and wisdom they learn at Jewish Baby Network in their homes, with their friends, and within their communities.

While I expected to foster community among new parents, I did not anticipate how much I would personally experience new human connections, both with the Jewish Baby Network parents themselves and with so many wonderful colleagues within the greater Jewish community. Through Jewish Baby Network, Jewish professionals across many different organizations are deepening their own human connections to new Jewish families and to each other.

I recently received the Helen Diller Family Award for Excellence in Jewish Education in the Informal Education category. Jewish Baby Network creates new human connections and learning opportunities in so many directions while offering a model of how to provide low cost, high impact programming for young families. My dream is that this award will encourage other communities to create similar programs for new parents and to use the Jewish Baby Network model of engagement to reach other key populations within the Jewish community.

Carol Booth is the recipient of the 2018 Helen Diller Family Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, Informal Education Category.